Opinion: Searching for the truth when lies are easy | News, Sports, Jobs

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Clarence Page

Sometimes, amidst the hustle and bustle of political events, I find myself jolted by an accidental truth that manages to seep through.

That appeared to be the case when Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, urged Democrats to “tone down their rhetoric,” without doing much to tone down his own.

In a live interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Vance tried to justify spreading what, even in polite terms, can only be called lies about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media really pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Vance did not provide names or other details about these unnamed witnesses or their accounts.

Instead, state and local officials denied the “first-hand accounts,” which are better described as debunked rumors.

What else do you call an alarmist statement without witnesses or other tangible facts to back it up?

Defending the statement, Vance offered that: “It comes from the firsthand accounts of my constituents.”

The lies really started to fly after former President Donald Trump fueled false rumors during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent. Trump said migrants are hunting and eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats in Springfield, an industrial city of about 60,000 an hour’s drive west of the state capital, Columbus.

Soon, right-wing social media personalities descended on the town to question wary locals about the veracity of the claims. Bomb threats were made against local schools and other public buildings, prompting many parents to keep their children at home.

Investigations led to a local resident, Erika Lee, who posted a fateful note on Facebook for which she has since apologized, according to the New York Times.

She had heard that a neighbor’s cat had gone missing, she told the Times, and posted a rumor on Facebook that a Haitian neighbor might have kidnapped it. However, when she returned later to check the story with her neighbor, she learned that the cat in question had not disappeared after all.

“And at that point, we’re playing the phone game,” Lee told the Times.

Rumors about killing and eating pets turn out to have a long history as smears against immigrants and other minority populations, particularly where they can be identified as a threat to local jobs and ethnic communities.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who continues to support Trump and Vance, said in an open letter to the New York Times: “I am saddened by the way they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage legal immigrants who live in Springfield…

“The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city of good, decent, welcoming people. They are hard workers – both those who were born in this country and those who settled here because in their native Haiti, innocent people can be killed just for rooting for the wrong team in a game of football.”

As a former Ohioan, born in Dayton and raised in Middletown, which later became Vance’s hometown, I sympathize with DeWine and others who have worked diligently against negative economic and social change since the heyday of industrial growth of the state half a century ago. .

Ironically, the latest round of migrants are legally present in the country and have come, mostly from Haiti, in response to active efforts to alleviate the shortage of local workers in an industrial area that was much more robust when we grew up there.

Vance surely knows this as well as I do. So does Trump, if he’s paying attention. But the desire to win votes in a close election leads people to, shall we say, go a little overboard.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media really pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

My colleague, the former Middletonian, urged the Democrats to tone down their rhetoric. He should do something similar to his. So should the former president.

— Clarence Page is a columnist at the Tribune Content Agency.